When Being "Fairest of them All" Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be by Rachel Parbs

Mirror Mirror on the Wall by PJ Lynch

Whether the reflection found in them is loved or despised, mirrors have always supplied valuable insight into the ambiguous concept of self. The need to know more about one’s outward appearance to determine inward desires is reflected in countless myths, folktales, and works of literature. From ﻿Narcissus’s﻿ consuming obsession with his reflection in a pond, Harry Potter’s fascination with seeing his deceased parents in the Mirror of Erised, and even ﻿Alice’s﻿discovery of adventures awaiting on the opposite side of the looking glass, people have long searched for something deeper in their reflections, making mirrors the perfect tool for writers to examine a multifaceted issue in society. In fairy tales in particular, mirrors often depict the objectification of women and the emphasis on outward physical beauty and sexual passivity that is demanded of female characters. Stories such as Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber,” The Grimm Brothers’ “﻿Little Snow-White﻿,” and Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “﻿﻿﻿﻿The Lady of Shalott﻿﻿﻿,﻿” utilize mirrors to give the reader insight into the deeper problems of self-identity that characters face under the subjugation of the appearance-oriented male gaze.

To understand the significance of mirrors in these tales, one must first understand the crippling consequences of the male gaze. What is the male gaze and how does it connect to the massive corpus of classic and modern fairytales? Laura Mulvey, who coined the term “male gaze” in her 1975 article﻿﻿﻿"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema﻿”﻿﻿defines it as the projection of women as being “simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” in order to appeal to heterosexual males (Mulvey 4). This idea has long infected cinema and literature from the beginning, becoming deeply ingrained in the minds of viewers and readers alike. Despite this, significant strides have been made in backlash against the ubiquity of the male gaze.

by Igor Karish

Angela Carter’s ﻿“The Bloody Chamber,”﻿ based on the classic fairytale Bluebeard, presents an intriguing glimpse into the connection between mirrors and sexuality. The protagonist’s sexual awakening occurs while she catches her soon-to-be husband gazing at her lustfully through a mirror. However, despite her happiness in discovering a newfound sexual longing, her husband’s gaze is deeply carnal and unhealthily possessive. The Marquis stares at her through the mirror with the “assessing eye of a connoisseur inspecting horseflesh, or even of a housewife in the market, inspecting cuts on the slab” (Carter), which gives insight into how the Marquis views her and how he viewed his previous wives, as meat and flesh, something over which to dominate and domesticate. Trapped in the mirror like a caged animal, the protagonist is objectified for the first time by a male figure, awakening in her a “longing for corruption” (Carter). According to Veronica Schanoes in her book Fairy Tales, Myth, and Psychoanalytic Theory, in this moment of the protagonist’s sexual awakening, her flesh is on display just for the Marquis, a direct comparison to and foreshadowing of his murdered and embalmed wives he displays in the chamber (87).

Later in the tale, before the newlywed couple consummates their marriage, mirrors appear again in an even more obvious way. If Carter did not make her point earlier in the story, this is her true opportunity to present to the reader the connection between mirrors and patriarchal oppression of women. When the protagonist approaches their marriage bed for the first time, the excessive mirrors surrounding the bed astonish her. Her husband remarks in response to her surprise, “See…I have acquired a whole harem for myself” (Carter). Not only does his use of the word “acquired” imply ownership, but it also suggests one man has the right to collect women like disposable objects. To him, sex is an act done by a dominant man to a passive woman, and this is intensified by the mirrors reflecting back the protagonist’s lack of agency in their sex life. The mirrors see a dozen husbands fight the “one-sided struggle” as he selfishly indulges in taking her virginity, clearly causing her a great deal of pain (Carter). The mirrors see a dozen husbands “impaling” a dozen brides, rather than lovingly easing her into her first sexual encounter (Carter). He is very much the hunter and she the prey, dehumanized by his gazing objectification of her through the cold mirrors, which reflect an accurate, yet inverted reality.

Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber" by Claire Borwell

The mirrors do however aid her in creating a distraction from her husband’s sexual advances. Rather than feeling and experiencing her first sexual encounter firsthand, she uses the mirrors as a form of dissociation from what is being done to her, watching several reflections of her husband undress several reflections of her (Schanoes 88). She views twenty four strangers engaging in unfamiliar acts as a form of diversion from her painful and passive experience. Clearly the protagonist does not enjoy what is being done to her, indicated by her fear, pain, and tears (Carter). It should be noted that in this tale, she is the one having something done to her, rather than being the one doing anything (Schanoes 90). She is always subservient to him when mirrors are present. The mirrors in “The Bloody Chamber” are so closely linked to the Marquis that they are virtually a physical part of him, as suggested when the protagonist seeks consolation after discovering the corpses of his dead wives: “I could not take refuge in my bedroom, for that retained the memory of his presence trapped in the fathomless silvering of his mirrors” (Carter). Here the protagonist has come to associate the cold other-worldliness of mirrors with her aloof husband, as she realizes that he is not all that he seems and hides a darkness behind his falsely glistening façade of love for her. The mirrors watch her like he watches her, with desire and objectification (Schanoes 86-87).

by Igor Karish

Later, however, the narrator discovers her own sense of agency through her reflection in the mirrors. After discovering the Marquis’s horrifying secret, she attempts to seduce him to postpone her impending death, and in this moment, she sees herself as powerful for the first time. Through the mirrors, she views herself as “pale, pliant as a plant that begs to be trampled underfoot, a dozen vulnerable, appealing girls reflected in as many mirrors, and I saw how he almost failed to resist me. If he had come to me in bed, I would have strangled him then.” Though she sees her outward appearance as the male gaze would have women believe themselves to be—powerless and something to be defeated—she also sees the potential that she possesses. She can kill her murderous husband, thus preventing the deaths of potentially infinite wives. She is now an agent in her own life, someone who has the ability to make her own decisions. In short, Carter employs mirrors as a literary symbol of both female objectification and empowerment. The mirrors allow the Marquis to see the protagonist as someone to sexually conquer and corrupt, but later the mirrors allow the protagonist to see that she is not so easily conquered or corrupted.

Viewing the world from a mirror must get old pretty quickly. "I Am Half-Sick of Shadows," Said the Lady of Shalott,
by John William Waterhouse

Another fascinating, if less dark, example of mirrors being used to represent the cold, dehumanizing effects of the male gaze is in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s "﻿The Lady of Shalott." Under a curse that prevents her from leaving the castle and forces her to weave the images she sees in her mirror, the Lady of Shalott lives alone in a tower near a river flowing toward Camelot. This mirror presents her with a cheapened, secondhand version of reality, the closest she can come to experiencing life. After seeing Sir Lancelot for the first time, she ceases her weaving and looks out of her window rather than the mirror. She finds a boat, carves her name into it, and floats down the river toward Camelot. Lancelot finds her corpse, remarking on her “lovely face” and nothing more. According to Linda Gill’s article “The Princess in the Tower: Gender and Art,” the Lady of Shalott’s duty is to tell the story that the men in the disproportionately male-dominated Camelot want her to tell through her weaving and through the mirror (Gill 114). She weaves what they want her to see, primarily “representations of social institutions like marriage, the market of both material and social exchange, and funerals,” thus showing her what they want her to see and likely repeat (Gill 114-115).

Unlike the other women analyzed in this paper, the Lady of Shalott has no described reflection, suggesting a lack of autonomy or sense of identifiable self. Tennyson purposefully offers little characterization of the lady in the tower, except through others’ perceptions of her. Her first line of dialogue in the tale is in response to what her mirror is showing her, not in response to anything that she naturally thinks or feels. After seeing two newlyweds, she declares, “I am half sick of shadows,” which indicates that she longs to experience life firsthand (Tennyson).

According to Gilbert and Gubar’s Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, mirrors expose the dichotomous view of women in fairy tales (36). On one end of the spectrum is the idealized angel-woman and on the other end is the demonized monster-woman. In the case of “The Lady of Shalott,” the protagonist begins as an angel-woman who submits to the patriarchal authority under which she falls, but then she shifts to a monster-woman who disobeys societal conventions and must die as a result. Not only does she die, but she is also reduced to an object in her death. Sir Lancelot, the ultimate symbol of masculinity, gazes upon her corpse, commenting not on the tragedy of her death but on the superficial aspects of her body. All he can say is that “she has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace.” Should God extend mercy based solely on the merits of her beauty or did Lancelot see something deeper within her? Ostensibly, he equates goodness with beauty. Another fairy tale that perfectly captures this angelization/demonization of women is Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s “Little Snow-White,” which utilizes a magic mirror to discern what constitutes the ideal woman through the male gaze.

The first glass entrapment holds Snow White's mother who dreams of creating the most beautiful child. Snow White by PJ Lynch.

In “Little Snow-White,” three “transparent enclosures” entrap women and cause conflict in the plot: a window, a mirror, and a glass coffin, all of which reflect women’s longing for something through a solid glass structure (Gilbert and Gubar 36). From the beginning of the tale, we as readers are introduced to an unnamed queen who is clearly discontent with her life. Looking for something more, she longs for a child from which she believes she will find happiness, a child who is perfect in the eyes of society, with all of the features of beauty that ostensibly she values. The irony here is that as soon as the queen has her perfect child, she dies, indicating that the perfect girl, possessing all of the traits the queen and society value, is extremely lethal. While the first queen gazes outward through the window at the pure white snow to find beauty, the second queen gazes inward through the mirror at herself to find beauty. That this drives her to madness is no surprise as what the mirror sees does not line up with the true internal beauty that she possesses because she listens to the “patriarchal voice of the judgmental” mirror, which tells her she is not beautiful enough, rather than recognizing her own internal strengths (Gilbert and Gubar 38). According to Gilbert and Gubar, the mirror discounts her captivating and resourceful personality, which includes her diverse roles as “a plotter, a plot maker, a schemer, a witch, an artist, and impersonator, a woman of almost infinite creative energy, witty, wily, and self-absorbed as all artists traditionally are” (38-39). She is infinitely more than the lies the mirror feeds her, yet succumbs to the mirror’s criticisms of her, leading her to desire what men believe is beautiful: someone who is “as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as wood” (Grimm).

Though she is crafty, persistent, and independent, the Stepmother in "Little Snow-White" cannot accept herself because the mirror tells her she is inadequate. Evil Queen by Steven Daily

Snow White’s characterization meets every expectation of the ideal woman as defined in a male-dominated society: chaste, innocent, “childlike, domicile, submissive, the heroine of a life that has no story” (Gilbert and Gubar 39). Though she is the most beautiful woman in the world through the mirror’s (and presumably all men’s) eyes, Snow White lacks any depth of personality, succumbs to a life of domesticity, and conforms to all conventional ideas of beauty. Here it is evident that the mirror’s judgment is not infallible and is the amalgamation of imaginary beauty standards as determined by men as a collective.Snow White’s beauty and fairness clearly mask her general lack of judgment. She allows the queen to nearly kill her three times with three symbols of domesticity: the lace bodice, the comb, and the apple (Gilbert and Gubar 40). Just like the mirror, which has at this point driven the queen to madness, these items are associated with objects of the home, either to improve one’s physical appearance or to prepare a meal. These objects of domesticity are murder weapons, and whether the Brothers Grimm intended it or not, serve as an act of protest toward the expected role of women in the household. A life spent trying to conform to expected the unattainably high standards of beauty and feminine goodness could very easily kill you.

Snow White, by Viona Ielegems

The third and final clear enclosure in which a woman in this fairy tale is trapped is Snow White’s glass coffin. The dwarfs place her in the coffin so that she could be “seen from all sides,” thus transforming the coffin into a type of mirror showcasing her beauty to the world (Grimm). When a woman looks in the mirror, Snow White’s is the face and body they long to see but cannot, so to display her in the glass coffin forces all women to see that this is the reflection that they should strive to achieve. She is so beautiful in fact that through the glass she becomes an object and a possession to be desired (Gilbert and Gubar 42). So objectified is she through the glass that the prince asks the dwarfs if he could have “it” as a possession to cherish, referring both to the coffin and the woman inside. She has become an idealized image of who she once was: the most beautiful and perfect woman, however now with no autonomy, voice, or purpose other than being admired (Gilbert and Gubar 42-43).

Mirrors, those glass cages of feminine beauty and desire, weave themselves throughout fairytales to reveal society’s seemingly unanimous viewpoint that women are the fairer sex, the ones to be conquered, and the ones to be objectified. The male gaze subjugates women in film and literature to sexual objects, but thankfully authors such as Angela Carter and Lord Alfred Tennyson sought to break down the harmful societal barrier of confining half of the population to the proverbial tower of isolation and objectification. Though authors such as the Brothers Grimm sadly sought to further these oppressive gender roles, challengers to this well-established system continue to defy rigid societal norms. Besides, who wants to be "fairest of them all" when you can be intelligent, witty, and brave?

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,Searching my reaches for what she really is.Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.I am important to her. She comes and goes.Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old womanRises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.-"Mirror" by Sylvia Plath